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Thursday, March 29, 2012

BREAD!!

Thank you for the love and support for my last post. You guys are golden. xo. Hopefully Simon will find a new home VERY SOON!!

So, guess what I made? BREAD! Yippee! This has been surprisingly fun and manageable. Since Matthew developed anaphylactic allergies last summer, I've been reading more labels. I was becoming increasingly frustrated with bread. Do you know how much unnatural crap goes into bread? Even organic bread??!! Ew. And tons of bread has sulfites, which we avoiding when we thought Matthew was allergic to those, and soy products, which he is in fact allergic to. Crazy.

So, I thought I'd try my hand at making bread. Actually the catalyst for that was visiting my friend Katie, who has the thermamix I'm so coveting?? She makes all her own bread and it is really, really yum. Of course she throws ingredients in the thermamix and presto! Bread dough ready for shaping and baking, but I thought maybe I'd try it in my Kitchen Aid mixer and see how much I hated it.

Here was my very first attempt to make bread:

Isn't it gorgeous?!.

I tried it in two shapes to see what we liked best (both are equally awesome although option #1 fits better in the toaster and option #2 looks way cooler).

Here's the recipe, and as you can see it is delicious on account of the sugar and white flour, and simple. I wanted to start easy with ingredients I have for certain rather than get fancy to start. I can always fancy it up next time, and in fact I already have.

Ingredients

2 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)

2/3 cup white sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons active dry yeast

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1/4 cup vegetable oil

6 cups bread flour

Directions

In a large bowl, dissolve the sugar in warm water,
and then stir in yeast. Allow to proof until yeast resembles a creamy
foam.

Mix salt and oil into the yeast. Mix in flour one
cup at a time. Knead dough on a lightly floured surface until smooth.
Place in a well oiled bowl, and turn dough to coat. Cover with a damp
cloth. Allow to rise until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.

Punch dough down. Knead for a few minutes, and
divide in half. Shape into loaves, and place into two well oiled 9x5
inch loaf pans. Allow to rise for 30 minutes, or until dough has risen 1
inch above pans.

The only downer to making my own bread is that we eat it so darn fast. It takes several hours of paying attention to the dough before you can pop it in the oven and declare it done, so it is not something I can do on a busy day without a breadmaker or thermamix.

I don't like breadmaker bread, although it would be nice to have a machine do the rise, mix, rise portion of the work and then I could bake it in the oven. But for now, yummy, simple, yet time consuming. I'll take it! =)

5 comments:

I love fresh bread too. Last year I was on a kick with our bread maker as I love the smell almost as much as the bread itself. Due to lack of counter space, once it's in the cupboard I forget to use it. Must get it back out! when I make cinnamon raisin bread, Kai doesn't eat it which means it lasts twice as long:)

So I'm not the only one who has been on a bread kick, huh? Yours looks awesome! I have a couple of no knead breads on my list to try next week because, as much as I love actually doing the kneading, if I want to replace store brought bread entirely, I need a fast and easy loaf I can try in a pinch.

I'm not a fan of microwaving, but this one uses warm flour to speed up the rising process and make it all easy: http://bakingbites.com/2011/02/no-knead-whole-wheat-honey-sandwich-bread/ I think I'll give it a shot just as an experiment. I may just have to add your recipe to my list, too!

I can show you how to do a really easy no-knead bread if you'd like...you just mix up the ingredients (flour, yeast, salt, water) and let it sit on the counter for 18-24 hrs. Ready to bake! Or...an awesome dough that can live in the fridge for up to a week and you just bake off a chunk as you need it...or crave it...you know how it works :P

There is nothing better than fresh bread straight from the oven. The reason I havent bought a bread machine yet is that I would be the size of a house, after eating a loaf a day! Yours looks really yummy, Im going to try your recipe! :)

I finally got to try this one this morning, and it is magnificent! I have tried 8 or 10 different bread recipes in the past few weeks, and this is my favorite basic bread so far. Bread flour is hard to come by around here, so I always add a tablespoon or two of vital wheat gluten to my regular wheat flour, and that worked great with coconut instead of white sugar. Delish! Thanks for sharing the recipe :)